Sonic Meditation XVIII: Listen to a sound until you no longer recognize it.
On the first page of her 1999 manifesto Quantum Listening: From Practice to Theory (To Practice Practice), Pauline Oliveros quotes Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche, who equates meditation with the wisdom of listening and the depth of insight. At that point, the composer had realised that her own listening skills were still evolving – forty-six years after she had begun to engage with sound.
After Oliveros received a tape recorder as a gift for her 21st birthday in 1953, she began recording the outside world from her apartment window and noticed that the microphone picked up sounds she had not heard during the recording. Her conclusion was: “Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening”.
Meditating on sound could bring changes in physiology and psychology from tensions to relaxations that would gradually become permanent
In the early 1960s, Oliveros collaborated with artists such as Terry Riley and Morton Subotnick at the San Francisco Tape Music Center to explore the potential of tape recorders in combination with prototype synthesizers. When the collectively run space was integrated into the renowned Mills College in Oakland in 1966, Oliveros became one of its three directors.
One night, while working in a studio there, the sounds from the outside world coming through a window taught her another lesson. The synthesiser pieces from Oliveros’ Bog series from 1967 are inspired by the sounds from the frog pond in front of the studio. It was there that she began to understand how important listening is for creative music-making.
Four years later, Oliveros developed a series of exercises aimed at deepening people’s daily engagement with sound through active listening. In the introduction to her Sonic Meditations, she explains that no special skills are required to perform these exercises and that anyone who is willing to engage with them can participate.
Since Oliveros developed the series with her Women’s Ensemble, most of the exercises are intended for groups, but some can also be done alone. The instructions for Sonic Meditation V consist of just a few words: Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.
Oliveros’ sonic meditations aim to achieve a heightened state of consciousness and an expansion of awareness. However, she also observed that meditating on sounds can lead to physiological and psychological changes – from known and unknown tensions to relaxation that gradually becomes permanent, i.e. listening can bring the mind and body into harmony in a positive way.
A pdf with some of Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations is hosted by the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.